The TKX22 Light Rifle is TANDEMKROSS's first complete rifle, and since its SHOT Show announcement, most of the conversation about it has centered on its $1,449.99 price. Back in April, TK brought a handful of us out to Gunsite Academy in Arizona for the rifle's launch, where we shot first-production samples with ammo TK supplied, mostly CCI Standard Velocity and Mini-Mags. It was a great day of shooting, but it didn't answer the question most of you were asking: what does $1,450 get you in a 10/22?
Now that I have a TKX22 of my own, I've put well north of 1,000 rounds through it, including a full 500-round box of Remington Thunderbolt and a 525-round box of Federal Champion, along with several of my favorite standard loads. I’ve also finally had a chance to test accuracy, different mounted accessories with the M-LOK-equipped TK barrels, and, in general, have just gotten a much better feel for what this rifle is trying to give the shooter. So here's how the rifle and its price pan out in my book. Suffice it to say that when combined with the thousands of rounds I had already shot at Gunsite, I’ve also put the rifle through a lot of work here at home as well. For those of you who’re new to the TKX22, let's go over its specs again really quickly.
Specifications/Features: TKX22 Light Rifle
Product Link: https://tandemkross.com/tkx22-light-rifle/
- Caliber: .22 LR (sporting chamber)
- Barrel: 16.5" Spitfire Lightweight, tensioned stainless steel with anodized aluminum M-LOK shroud
- Twist: 1:16"
- Muzzle threads: 1/2"x28
- Overall length: 34.75"
- Weight: 3 lbs 6 oz unloaded
- Length of pull: 13.75"
- Trigger: Manticore LITE, adjustable 2.5 to 5.5 lbs
- Receiver: TKX22 billet aluminum, integral 0 MOA extended Picatinny rail, rear cleaning port
- Stock: Magpul MOE X-22
- Sights: Eagle Eye fiber optic set for M-LOK, rear adjustable for windage and elevation
- Magazine: one Assembled DoubleKross (20 rounds in two 10-round compartments)
- MSRP: $1,449.99
Adding Up the Parts
Every major component on the TKX22 is also sold separately, so the price can be checked against the parts very easily, and we can see exactly where all of the cost is coming from. At current retail prices, here’s what you’re looking at:
That adds up to $1,241.88 before the V-block, pins, springs, and the time it takes to assemble and fit everything. While the official MSRP is $1,449.99, retailers are already listing the TKX22 below that, sometimes around $1,299.99 in the online listings I found. At that street price, the complete rifle costs about $58 more than its parts bought separately on your own (about $208 more at full MSRP), which I think is a more agreeable cost for assembly for those who would rather not go through the trouble or the experience of building their own 10/22. I have multitudes of 10/22 parts lying around, so I’m constantly putting together and tearing apart builds. Putting them together and configuring them is part of the fun for me.
A lot of these “extras” are meaningful improvements like the trigger, bolt, and even the magazine release. The small wedge is actually my preferred magazine release now, even over some of the longer lever-style mag releases. The trigger (which is adjustable) was shipped at around 3 pounds, as tested on my scale. Although it is adjustable to as light as 2.5 or as heavy as 5 pounds, I didn’t feel like it needed to be adjusted that light or heavy for my testing.
The Spitfire Barrel
The Spitfire Lightweight barrel is a success of its own and is what gets the rifle down to 3 lbs 6 oz. TK turns a thin stainless core and holds it under tension with an aluminum shroud, then cuts M-LOK slots directly into that shroud. TK sells the same barrel separately for about $380 to $410, depending on length and coating choices; the shorter Comet barrel is a great drop-in option for the new 10/22 SBR. On most rifles, a light or bipod attaches to a handguard or stock that floats free of the barrel. On the TKX22, anything mounted to the shroud attaches to the tensioned barrel assembly itself, which will inevitably cause some POI shift, especially if the items are heavy.
M-LOK and POI Shift
The M-LOK slots are cut to spec, but there is much less depth behind them than on a typical AR-15 M-LOK handguard because the shroud is so close to the barrel core. Shorter hardware works in my experience. Some examples include my KDG Kinect M-LOK mount for my Garmin Xero C1 chronograph, which attached without issue, and so did the vertical foregrips I tried. A SureFire light on an M-LOK adapter would not mount because the adapter's hardware was long enough to contact the barrel and I’m certain that all that I’d need to fix a light to it is shorter hardware.
Small accessories like the XTech Tactical Thru-Flo rail covers seen above go on just fine on any of the M-LOK available on the rifle, including the barrel shroud. TK's installation notes for the Spitfire warn that some M-LOK fasteners may need to be shortened for this reason. With accessories installed, I didn't see much of a shift in point of impact. Given how thin the barrel and shroud are, I expect there is a point where adding more to the barrel will start to move the zero, and at that point I think you’re just asking for trouble rather than trying to get more functionality out of the gun.
Ammo and Reliability
I shot a mix of standard and bulk loads through the rifle at home, similar to how we did at Gunsite. Among the loads I tested were: CCI Green Tag (filling in for CCI Standard Velocity, which I'm currently out of), CCI Target Mini-Mag 40gr, Aguila Super Extra 40gr standard velocity, CCI Clean-22 Suppressor 45gr, and Remington Subsonic 40gr. For bulk ammo, I shot a full 500-round box of Remington Thunderbolt and a full 525-round box of Federal Champion 36gr copper-plated hollow points. Both bulk ammos I have had in my inventory for quite some time, and as a result, if you click through to some of these links, you’ll see that the box art has changed.
What I found most interesting from my roughly 2,500 rounds of shooting this rifle is that the rifle fed round-nose loads without issue from every magazine I tried. Hollow points were less consistent. With the DoubleKross magazine TK sent with the rifle, hollow point rounds from both sides of the magazine would strike the rear of the chamber instead of feeding, and the same thing happened in my other 10/22s.
Remington Subsonic and Federal Champion hollow points also had feeding issues even from Ruger BX-15 magazines, though less often than with the DoubleKross. BX-1s are handy but highly limited in capacity, but they also turned out to be the most reliable magazines, to no one’s surprise. Most of what we shot at Gunsite was round-nose CCI, so this didn't come up on that trip, from my recollection.
From my experience in trying out virtually every type of 10/22 compatible magazine back in the early 2010s, the Assembled DoubleKross with TK's glass-filled nylon feed lips tend to be less reliable overall than magazines that use steel feed lips such as Ruger’s BX-1 and BX-15 magazines. The BX-15s still had some trouble with hollow points, so the bullet profile appears to be the larger factor with this rifle, but I'd still like to see TK offer a version of the DoubleKross with metal feed lips, as the plastic ones tend to allow malfunctions like this to happen more often in my experience as the magazines get used.
Predictably, most of these issues only started showing up well after the accuracy testing portion, and only as I started to near 600-700 total rounds fired, for sure after I finished off the bulk pack of Federal 36grain and the Thunderbolt, dirty as it is, made this even worse till I had to blast the inside of the receiver and bolt with some CLP and high-pressure air to get it running again. Rimfire is dirty business, and the 10/22 in all of its forms is not immune from getting gummed up.
Accuracy
This section here was probably what most of you were after from the first article. I didn’t feel like it was a good environment for me to test out the overall accuracy of the gun. So for my own accuracy testing, I mounted a Maven CRS.1 3-12x40 and fired one 10-shot group per load at 25 meters, using a bipod on the Magpul stock and bags for support.
TK lists the TKX22 with a sporting chamber rather than a match chamber (like with the Angstadt RPR), but every Comet and Spitfire barrel I own has shot better than a typical off-the-shelf 10/22 barrel, and this one grouped under an inch at 25 meters with most of what I fed it. So while not a match barrel, I’d definitely say whatever TK is doing with these barrels is at least a cut above a standard taper factory 10/22 barrel.
CCI Green Tag shot the best group of the test, with nearly every shot going through the same hole at the edge of a 1-inch dot, well below an inch in size. Remington Subsonic was the next best. CCI Target Mini-Mag, Aguila Super Extra, CCI Clean-22 Suppressor, and Federal Champion 36gr all grouped about the same, around an inch or less but noticeably more spread out than either the Rem Subsonic or the Green Tag. As you’d expect, the Remington Thunderbolt was the least accurate at about 1.5 inches.
Green Tag and Clean-22 Suppressor were also the quietest and most reliable loads I shot, but both cost a few cents more per round than the bulk ammo. Accuracy with the Federal Champion bulk pack was more than enough for plinking, and it made for a relatively quiet afternoon working through some of my hoarded bulk ammo. Even with as inaccurate as the Remington bulk was, I’d still probably bring it out for a casual plinking day with the boys, simply because it's quite enough with a suppressor, cheap enough, and serviceably accurate for blasting away at the range.
Final Thoughts
The most common reaction to the TKX22 since its SHOT Show announcement has been to its price, and at $1,449.99, that reaction is 100% understandable - Even I was a bit blown away by the price. A factory 10/22 costs a fraction of that (roughly $250), and plenty of shooters will be happy with Bill Ruger’s original 10/22. The TKX22 is aimed at a much narrower group: dedicated rimfire shooters who want and/or need an incredibly lightweight and carryable 10/22. Even newer competitors who are getting into Steel Challenge and other rimfire action sports could probably benefit from a lightweight rifle like this, especially if they’re a younger shooter who might not yet have the body strength to handle a slightly heavier 10/22. The Team at TANDEMKROSS has spent years building its business around this exact concept since 2012- simply trying to make already good guns great. The TKX22 is only a logical extension of what they’ve already been doing up until now with their first official complete firearm.
For those who desire the TKX22 and want to buy one, I think the actual math works out a little bit better than what the official MSRP from TANDEMKROSS suggests. At street prices (~$1,300), the TKX22 costs about what its parts cost separately; it arrives assembled, and the receiver, barrel, bolt, and trigger are all TK parts made in the USA and compatible with the rest of the 10/22 aftermarket. On top of that, I don’t think there is any arguing that the overall quality, presentation, and polish of the parts coming out of TK are a notch higher than what you will get from a standard 10/22. Other premium 10/22s cost nearly as much, if not more.
In short, I think that for a casual plinker, the TKX22 is more rifle than most will need. For someone shooting rimfire matches, setting up a premium youth rifle, or looking for an insanely lightweight trekking rifle, it's a 3 lb 6 oz package that's ready to go out of the box with high-quality, adjustable M-LOK fiber optic irons, and the only real problem I found was that it, like a lot of other .22 LR rifles, is just a bit picky about what ammo it likes and doesn’t like. Even then, it shoots that ammo better than most factory 10/22s, let alone other types of 22LR semi-auto plinkers.
Either way, time will tell whether or not the crew over at TANDEMKROSS hit the nail on the head with this rifle. Personally, I think it's a great addition to the high-end 10/22 market, and I’m excited to show you guys more of what TANDEMKROSS has to offer on that front here in a few weeks on TFB. Love to hear your thoughts on this one, thanks as always for stopping by to read The Rimfire Report, and we'll see you all again next week!
